Homeless Pensioner Forced To Live In His Car While Battling Cancer Because His Housing Is Not A Priority

A nurse visits him in the Ford every day to treat the painful sores that have developed on his skin.

‘The car smells and I have to have my sores bandaged up every day,’ said Mr Russell.

‘Nobody intends to end up homeless and desperate, but that’s what’s happened.’

The former draper, currently in remission after cancerous tumours were removed from his neck, still finds himself down the pecking order for social housing in St Neots, Cambridgeshire, despite his desperate plight.

The former business owner moved to St Neots from Ayreshire, Scotland, to be nearer his sister Patricia Chown, 57. 

But Patricia, who is housebound because of arthritis, cannot offer him somewhere to sleep because it would break the terms of her own social housing tenancy.

Mr Russel said: ‘I was married for 14 years and the divorce I lost everything. 

‘I was evicted from my previous home in Scotland by environmental health and came back to St Neots to be near my sister.

‘I got put on the housing list but they placed me on the lowest band D because I couldn’t prove I was homeless.

‘They’ve been saying for months that they would send a council official to visit me but no-one has been.

‘The conditions I’m living in are horrendous.’

Mr Russell sleeps in the car’s front passenger seat, and lives off his just £150 a week pension and disability benefit.

He added: ‘The doctor came and said there is a risk of me having a blood clot, so I spent two days in hospital.

‘It’s very frustrating. I’m still recovering from having cancerous growths taken out of my head and neck and these conditions aren’t helping.’ 

Although feeding his three dogs, Trouble, Stretch and Gabby, is costing him a quarter of his income, he insists that he could never leave them behind.

‘I can’t just leave them. I’ve had them for more than a decade and I know they’ll be thrown on the scrapheap if I let them go,’ he said. 

‘They’re all old dogs. If they go to a home, no-one will have them as pets..’  

Mr Russell was recently bumped up to band A on Huntingdonshire District Council’s housing waiting list after a resident complained about the conditions he was living in. 

His niece, Natasha Shevki, 35, said: ‘It’s so horrible to watch a member of your family in this state.

‘It’s awful because we all want to help but we simply don’t have the room.

‘Mum will breach her contract if he stays there and I’ve got four children at mine so we’re already sleeping on the sofa.’

So Mr Russell and his dogs will have to continue living in the car, which he can’t drive because of his arthritis, until he finds an alternative. 

A spokesman for Huntingdonshire District Council said: ‘We are aware of this individual and are working with him to help find accommodation.’